Contrary to the Waikato Times report on August 28, church representatives are not "united in their stance" against Louisa Wall's marriage equality bill.

As church leaders working in regional church courts, local congregations and faith-based social service agencies here in the Waikato, we support marriage equality as a spiritual and ethical imperative.

We do so because we are guided by the question: "What would Jesus do?" When we look at the gospels, we see the example of One who called on us to love our neighbour, to welcome those who are oppressed and marginalised and to stand up for justice.

We support marriage equality as a justice issue. We believe it is time to end discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and to offer all New Zealanders the right to marry.

We believe the wider community is ready for such a change. Our experience is that many within the Christian community are also supportive, even if their voices are not as loud as those opposing the measure.

Noisy nights by the port I spent the weekend in Hamilton, and was reading the letter written by Dave Campbell in Saturday's Waikato Times about inland ports.

I must agree with his concerns raised in his letter. The reason being, I live in Auckland, closer to the container port. I must agree that a container port is not suitable for a residential area. I live in a rented unit but throughout the day we hear noise of containers dumped on top of one another, beeps of heavy vehicles and cranes. Night-time noise is so high it disturbs my sleep. All tenants in our flat will have the same story, we can see the rusted containers over the height of our two-storey flat. Container ports are ideal for a scrap metal yard or industrial area and not residential.